running for home
by androidilenya
Summary: Galdor's wife as Gondolin falls. ( For Legendarium Ladies April and Gondolin Week Day 1: Houses of the Heavenly Arch and Tree.)


**This was for a Gondolin week thing on tumblr, and mostly founded on that thing in LaCE where most elves marry – not because I adhere to LaCE in the slightest (duh), but because there aren't anywhere near enough female characters in the legendarium.**

* * *

He found her in a storage room, preparing a weapon from the stash they kept there. She heard him enter and did not turn around, choosing to let him speak first. Somewhere in the distance, alarm bells were ringing.

"You won't go down into the city, will you?" Galdor asked without preamble, words transparently concerned––whatever else they said about him and his valor, he was utterly incapable of dissemblance. She shrugged and started sharpening a spear.

"We'll see."

"Rasi–" he began, and she narrowed her eyes at him, frowning slightly.

"I signed up to be a part of the King's Guard, even before the Nirnaeth, and I don't plan on leaving any time soon. That means I stay with Turgon. If he goes down into the city, that's his business. By Nienna's tears, Galdor, _I_ ought to be worried about _you_." Her voice was prickly with nervous irritation, the words grating even as she spoke them, but Galdor only chuckled.

"And well you might, considering my ineptness with a spear, hm?" He moved his hand up to rub a slow circle across the tensed muscles of her shoulders. "You speak true. Only–" His smile faded, a serious look creeping into the wide brown eyes she loved so much. "I want you to stay safe, Rasiel."

"And you_."_ She bent down and kissed him (that hands-breadth of height she had on him had always been a subject of playful banter, and she would _not_ think about the possibility that she might never have another chance to make him stand on tip-toe for a kiss, not now). When she pulled back, he looked like he was about to cry––and if he got started, she would as well, and they would never leave this storage room. And as pleasant as that option might seem at the moment–

"Do try to keep from impaling yourself on your own spear," she said, stepping away. He laughed, the sound oddly choked.

"Or concussing myself with a club, yes. And do your best to keep from falling off of any walls?"

She nodded, suddenly furious with this entire situation, with the acrid scent of smoke rising in the air and the heavy way her armor clanked.

"We'll win," he added, and it sounded an awful lot like he was trying to convince himself of that fact.

"Of course we will."

* * *

She had met him for the first time in the new city, beside one of the bubbling fountains that had given this place its name. He had been asleep, slumped against the marble basin and snoring softly.

(_And drooling. Drooling massively,_ she informed him later, over his vehement protests––protests that were rather spoiled by his mounting blush.)

She tripped over a loose cobblestone and dropped an armful of hunting arrows onto him––by accident, she still insisted––and he woke up with a surprised yell, arms pinwheeling in an attempt to keep from splashing backwards into the fountain. They both ended up soaked, of course, but the sun was warm, and after Rasiel snapped out an embarrassed apology they somehow ended up spending the rest of the day talking.

_And that was it,_ Galdor whispered into her hair on their wedding night. _One look, and I thought, _there. That's the one for me._ The one I could spend awhile with, you know?_

_I would hope that you upgraded that to _forever_ at some point, considering,_ she had mumbled drowsily, only half thinking about it, and she had felt the rumble of his laugh vibrating through her.

They played games by moonlight, games where Rasiel would run through the gardens and Galdor would follow, calling after her, both of them choking on laughter. It felt _safer_ in the dark (the light and noise had always frightened Rasiel, on some level), and every time she pitched forward into his arms it felt a little more like home.

_Bet you can't catch me!_

* * *

The Orcs came swarming up the stairs, and to Rasiel's smoke-stung eyes they looked like a single formless mass with many bristling legs, seething insect-like over the battlements. And the only panicked thought she permitted herself was _Galdor, where's Galdor_, before her world became bestial yells and slashing swords.

She was terrified.

And when she got scared, she got angry––_furious_. Galdor was the only one who knew how to calm her down when the world blurred red with rage, and Galdor––wasn't here.

Her spear splintered in her hands at some point, buried in an Orc's body, the force of the blow driving wooden shards through her gauntlet and into her palm. She bent and snatched another from the hands of someone dead (did not look at the face to see if it was someone she knew), feeling the blood-soaked glove squelch wetly as she did so.

(In the back of her mind, the mantra thrummed: _the King, is the King safe, where is he––_because she was a guard, first and last and always, and she had promised to be one until her last breath. But it was easier to let the rage take over, to hide behind a red haze and call herself safe, to let it sweep everything away until there was no room for fear.)

Something cold bit into her arm just above the elbow with a crunch of chain mail and she staggered back, mouth opening in a soundless scream of shock––and then the pain hit, and she doubled over, wrenching away from the blade and hearing her spear clatter out of her limp hand. An Orc loomed over her, snarling.

She lashed out with her other hand, steel gauntlet smashing into its face. It drew back, and she scrabbled for another spear, a knife, _anything_. Her feet slipped in blood and she went down, felt cold steel slam into her stomach.

She screamed again, and this time sound emerged, the high keening noise of a wounded animal. The sword was wrenched out, and she felt sticky warmth flooding across her skin, the world swimming around her.

_Ah, Elbereth–_

The Orc brought the sword down again and she summoned the last of her strength, pitching sideways to avoid it, a pained noise torn from her throat. It _hurt_, like a fire burning her from within, and the mass of the enemy was rushing headlong up the stairs, past her, towards the one she was supposed to protect–

She watched the blade rise again, the steel (streaked with _her blood_) glinting strangely, reflecting the fires burning below. The Orc's face was contorted in an animal-snarl, and the seconds seemed to be congealing, tangling up in themselves, so she had time to suck in a lungful of air that tasted like iron and ash, time to struggle up to her knees.

_I'll catch you._

Galdor's eyes catching the moonlight, his hands in her hair and the smell of lilac on the night air. (Smoke, rising from the gardens, flower petals shriveling to grey ash on the wind––)

_C'mon, Rasiel, I'm right here!_

Her lips shaped words that might have been _coming_, might have been _catch me, Galdor._

She staggered upright and felt the sword punch through the chain mail again, felt it catch against bone, but then she was tumbling over the edge of the wall with a fistful of her enemy's matted hair.

For an instant, she flew.


End file.
